Monday, December 03, 2007

More on Bali Carbon Footprint

The UK Times has their own estimate of the Bali conferences' carbon footprint, and it's more than three times mine:

“Calculations suggest flying the 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green campaigners and television crews into Indonesia will generate the equivalent of 100,000 tons of extra CO2. That is similar to the entire annual emissions of the African state of Chad.”

Their person who did the calculation asks:

“One wonders how many people would have gone if the conference had been held in a wet October in Pittsburgh.”

Are the emissions worth it?

Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Programme, said such conferences could never be small. “If you want to tackle an unprecedented global challenge like climate change then people have to meet and talk. Bali remains the world’s best hope to minimise the effect of global warming.”

Of course, most people who travel, certainly for business, feel their across-the-world flights are equally essential. Could the UN have shown their concern by organizing the conference as the world's largest and most sophisticated video conference ever?

In any case, UN officials are going without suit and ties, to save on air-conditioning. So maybe this time they're really serious.